Susan Freeman
Hi, I’m Susan Freeman. Welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am delighted to welcome Stephanie Hyde. Stephanie is CEO of the UK and EMEA Markets at JLL. She joined JLL in 2021, to lead the UK business after over 25 years in professional services. Her role was recently expanded to incorporate the leadership of JLL’s EMEA Markets Advisory Business. Stephanie is responsible for driving strategy and results for JLL’s Leasing Advisory and Property Management Businesses as well as delivering a connected approach to clients across the UK and EMEA region. Under her leadership, the UK business renewed its commitment to its sustainability strategy and goals with expansion of its sustainability team and services alongside the introduction of a new sustainability framework. She is continuing this work across the EMEA Region and passionately believes that to achieve net zero carbon commitments, businesses must move beyond words from strategy to implementation to deliver measureable actions. During her time at PWC, Stephanie delivered growth across multiple business lines developed client programmes in the UK and globally and ran PWC’s Industry Programme with a key focus on technology, transformation and sustainability. She previously led the UK regional business for PWC and was a member of its global leadership team and UK executive board. So now we are going to hear from Stephanie Hyde about her ground-breaking move into the real estate sector and the challenges she is facing. Stephanie, good morning.
Stephanie Hyde
Good morning, very good to be here thank you.
Susan Freeman
I am so pleased to be able to talk to you because it’s not often that somebody who has had such senior roles in other sectors comes into real estate and is able to offer a view, if you like, from the outside, so I’m really pleased to be talking to you this morning.
Stephanie Hyde
Thank you.
Susan Freeman
So, you worked at PWC in a number of senior roles for, I think, 25 years before joining JLL in April 2021 and you were the first female and probably, first non-surveyor CEO and I think it was considered a real milestone for the UK property industry, but before we talk about JLL and the real estate sector, can we talk a little bit about PWC, how you came to be an accountant, whether it was always a career path that you wanted to follow.
Stephanie Hyde
I mean before being at PWC, I probably had 11 jobs actually because from a young age I had always been very motivated to get out there and work, work with people, I had worked in lots of different shops, I worked as a laundry attendant at The Royal Marsden Hospital, which was education in lots of different ways. I’d worked in a fish and chip shop and pet shop at the same time for years, so I would work on a parade of shops, I worked at many of those shops as I grew up and I used to work in a pet shop in the morning, go for lunchtime in the fish and chip shop, run along the back of the alley to come in the shop. I would work in the afternoon in the pet shop again and then I would go back and work in the fish and chip shop in the evening. So always very motivated to do different things for different people. The funny thing about that story is that actually one day I served someone in the morning and I then rushed out the back, ran through to get into the fish and chip shop, and washed my hands, put my hat on, put my uniform on, opened the door and the same woman I had just served came in from the pet shop and looked at me very oddly, I clocked immediately, she was exactly the same woman I had just given some cat food to and she stood there looking at me for a while and then she said, ‘I have just seen your twin, you are very similar aren’t you, but I could definitely tell the difference between you’. Just that capacity to work in lots of different places, accountants in Paris I worked at, an accountants in Sutton, I got sponsored through University by British Gas. It just set me up really well when I went into PWC or Coopers & Lybrand as it was when I joined them because most of the environment you are in professional services is a people business ultimately.
Susan Freeman
I think it is a great story as you were talking about the fish and chip shop and the pet shop, I was hoping there was no relationship between the pet shop and… (laughter)
Stephanie Hyde
Certainly not!
Susan Freeman
Good, pleased to hear that and at PWC you work with you know, some of the largest businesses, I think GSK, AstraZeneca and also, you know start-ups, so you really covered the whole, the whole gamut of business and I was just wondering whether other sectors are facing the challenges that we are facing in real estate because being in real estate we think it is just out sector, but are there the same issues going on everywhere?
Stephanie Hyde
Absolutely, absolutely, it was fascinating actually, I mean I was so lucky with my career there, I had so much opportunity to work with different types of companies as you say, but across industries. I did have a lot of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, but I think I worked with every industry apart from, I didn’t spend much time in financial services and worked with a few insurance companies and I haven’t done that much work at all with real estate companies. So, it was interesting to come through as an auditor and that you really have to understand what makes a company tick in order to do a good audit, how they make their money and you can help them focus on how they can improve their business, but what I saw in working across those industries, was how industries saw themselves change and I would put this down to probably a decade ago it became very clear, maybe 15 years ago, it started to change. It was probably social media, the rise of technology being so important and data at one point was considered the new oil as it were because there were things happening across every single industry where there was a convergence of issues that people started to look at. So data, tech, sustainability and the changing face really of the consumer which I think was largely driven by social media, because people could communicate and get behind things in a very different way and so, when I had my global role at PWC, leading the industry programme, we went from a place where different industries had very different conversations to much more encouragement of learning from other industries and when I go and see CEO’s they would want to not only talk about their own industry, they would want to talk about other industries and that was a real shift from probably the 5 years before that and so, we are not alone absolutely, the real estate industry is probably been a little bit slower to adapt and I think it recognises that, but all of these industries are facing every company and every sector.
Susan Freeman
That is so interesting because I think in real estate we tend to be a little bit introspective and you know sometimes can be a bit of an echo chamber, so you don’t always know what’s actually going on in other sectors and whether they are facing the same problems so that, I mean really useful experience and also seeing it on a sort of global international basis as well. So, you gave up your position on PWC’s global leadership board and decided to leave PWC and accountancy to take up a role in real estate. What drove that decision?
Stephanie Hyde
So, I actually, I came back off of the global leadership position as part of effectively a rotation because there was a sort of 4-year thing, so it happened at the same time as Covid, so I came out in the middle of July 2020, in the middle of 2020 and I was then reflecting that I had had this amazing career, what was I go and do next and within PWC, but at the same time, I was approached by JLL and as I got into a conversation with them it became clear as I thought more about the industry, that this was a chance to be in an industry that would really be in the forefront of addressing the challenges that I was seeing. There was a little bit of perhaps drinking my own Kool-Aid, I have been giving advice to companies for lots and lots of years and coming in as a CEO would be an opportunity to try some of that actually myself, take my own advice, but when I thought about the industry, it was quite an unusual time to make that change because it was in the middle of Covid and there were lots of conversations about offices, hybrid working, but it was in the headlines as never before. It was in the boardrooms that real estate discussed it to a level that it never had been before and it was also very apparent to me from the pandemic that real estate had such an important role to play in people’s lives and they were recognising that. If you think back to then, that it’s very hard to think back to all we went through through that period, that the environments we were in, people stuck in their homes, they couldn’t get to use outside space, if they couldn’t get to the environments that were positive and healthy for them, the impact it had, so there were so many elements of buildings of the built environment and real estate in general that were coming to the fore and so it seemed like a very interesting place to be.
Susan Freeman
No, you are right, I think we did think about things differently during Covid and if real estate wasn’t a board room issue before it certainly is now and continues to be and do you feel that there has been, was there resistance to you coming in as an accountant running a company that would traditionally have been run by a surveyor, because that has tended I think to be the case in most of the big property services firms.
Stephanie Hyde
I didn’t see that and I was really pleased that there wasn’t. Actually, the industry as a whole was incredibly welcoming and I felt that right from the beginning all the way through. JLL as a culture is naturally incredibly welcoming and open minded and actually approached me because they wanted that different perspective. They wanted the business to be challenged. They recognised that the industry needed to move forward, what had got the industry to where it was and to be as successful as it was and what JLL had been and the way it was, isn’t necessarily what it needed in order to go forward and I just felt great support, I mean Chris Ireland was absolutely fantastic to work with. Incidentally, I nearly ended up killing him the first time we met because we had to sit outside because it was Covid and it was a blazing hot summer day, so I put this big parasol up so that we were able to sit apart as you were required to do outside, but also not swelter in the heat while we were having out first meeting and a massive gust of wind came along and this parasol, a very heavy parasol, blew over and nearly landed on him, he just grabbed it time and I was thinking, this is not the start I wanted, but he was very welcoming despite that… (Laughter).
Susan Freeman
It sounds very, very dramatic and was the recruitment decision driven by the American head office or how does it work?
Stephanie Hyde
So, the GB and Christian Ulbrich himself was very significantly involved, Guy Grainger, very involved, Chris very involved, it was a mutual decision I think to just take the opportunity to look more broadly. JLL has always been out there, I mean the industry is changing a lot and there’s lots of great things that we’re doing, but JLL, one of the things that attracted me to the company and the group was the fact that they were shown to have looked historically to push forward on certain issues and challenges and so sustainability, JLL had invested about 20 years ago when it, you know, it wasn’t even understood or known and really developed that on technology, taking a leading position there and so it was tied through to that that they wanted to keep moving forward, they wanted to continue to push forward and indeed, we do continue to try and push forward on issues and so it was tied to that, bringing a fresh perspective. We have so many amazing people who are very well versed in the industry, very experienced and very capable, but is there an added ingredient of bringing somebody in to look at things a different way that can be added to.
Susan Freeman
We will come to sustainability in a minute and I have interviewed Guy Grainer for the podcast so I know how much JLL has been doing in that area and when he originally came in, it was to run the UK business and I think your role has recently been expanded to incorporate the EMEA markets advisory business. Do you think workers want strategy for all the jurisdictions or does it vary from region to region?
Stephanie Hyde
So, we have three regions, I mean we have our different business lines and market advisory being one of them, capital markets is another and then we have our JLL T area as well and what you see is of course, because real estate is still a very local business, there are differences between countries of course, there is different legislations, there’s different ways of working, there’s different focuses in the market, you can have a very strong residential business in one area, but not necessarily in others. I work very closely with 2 other leaders across EMEA to make sure that we stay very joined up for our clients, because our clients typically are very much multi-asset and looking across the spectrum, but my role really is focussed on agency leasing, tenant rep, property management, industrial logistics, retail, so all the sectors and looking at that advisory and consulting perspective as well, broadly. It does vary and it certainly varies where countries are economically and in the cycle at the moment as well and that makes a difference, but it is fantastic because what I see is quite an entrepreneurial culture and the culture is very strong in JLL across all of the countries and the learnings we can get from the US or I was on with Head of Asia Pacific yesterday and you know hearing some of the things that are going on in their markets, I was talking recently to our Head of India, amazing lady, who again has got a very different perspective having come in from Deutsche Bank. I was on this morning with Portugal and just hearing some of the innovation in the market and it’s our responsibility to continually innovate and think about how the markets moving forward and because different markets move at different paces and in different ways, joining up across EMEA and sharing those experiences is really powerful.
Susan Freeman
You have got a lot on your plate I think? (Laughter)
Stephanie Hyde
I love it, always love to keep busy (Laughter)
Susan Freeman
How large is JLL internationally and in the UK because I don’t know the numbers?
Stephanie Hyde
I mean we were about 104,000 people now across the globe, so it’s pretty significant really and it’s just a great environment. I feel so fortunate because I have worked with so many different cultures across my 25 years, hundreds of companies and I’ve never seen a culture like it, it’s just incredibly positive and supportive. I travel into Marylebone or Baker Street every day and I tend to try and walk to Regents Street, it’s probably the only bit of exercise I can be sure of getting and sometimes I see people looking at me oddly, which does happen in London from time to time and then I find it’s because I’ve got a huge smile on my face because I’m thinking about the day ahead or I’m thinking about some meetings in my head as I’m walking in so, but I actually think that’s true for the broad industry as well. One of the earliest events I went to was the JLL triathlon and just seeing about 4,500 people come together in that event and there was so much camaraderie across the industry because the industry works very differently to most industries as well because people work closely together. They work on the same deals, they train with each other and they stay close whereas in the big 4 it’s much more separate actually. My experience in the past was, you know, the companies stayed much more separate and were much more competitive. There is still competitiveness but it’s in a positive way in this industry.
Susan Freeman
That’s really interesting because people do talk about real estate as being a sort of sociable industry and I think, you know, that’s one of the things that the people really like about it and obviously we all missed during lock-down and has there been anything, you know, that’s particularly surprised you about real estate as a sector? So, you know coming into it as somebody who’d been in business for many years but, you know, coming into a new sector you must have had, you know, certain pre-conceptions. Has there been anything surprising?
Stephanie Hyde
The thing I wasn’t expecting was the impact that being involved with such tangible assets really has on individuals. So, what do I mean by that? People are incredibly proud and have a strong connection with the buildings that they are attached to, whether that’s property management, facilities management, they’re buying and they’re selling them. I was talking to someone the other day and they brought their 7 year old into London, not just to see the lights but they ended up having a tour of buildings that they knew that they’d worked with and associated with. I just see that engagement in a different way to how I’ve seen in other industries. If you are in pharmaceuticals, you can be incredibly proud of the great work that you do to keep people healthy or to make them well, but you don’t have that same close association generally with a particular medicine. If you are in audit, you know you can talk about how you hold up the capital markets, but at the end of the day, the product is a typically a, an audit opinion, an audit opinion on a piece of paper or a set of accounts that you worked on for months often to get things communicated in the right way. That is not as tangible as a building, it’s not as tangible as an environment in a way that you make people feel when they come into that space or place and people are so proud of it. I just hadn’t expected that level of connection and engagement.
Susan Freeman
It’s true and you know, we know that people spend 90% of their lives inside in a building whether they’re living in it, working in it. What I really don’t quite understand is why the sector doesn’t have a better image, why, you know, generally outside the people that are involved in real estate, people aren’t more sort of enthusiastic about the amazing places that, you know, we create. The messages don’t seem to get out far enough.
Stephanie Hyde
I have pondered on that actually because I agree with you, I’m not quite sure why it’s not landed in the right way. I would put it down to a number of factors, probably one is that I do think the industry has historically been quite insular and been happy that it’s a well-kept secret to be in the industry and if you knew about it largely from a relative or from someone else who was very close to you, then you knew how good it was but if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have thought about it. I think that the industry in general and, you know, we play our part in this, but I know all the agencies are very active in this, are making great strides in improving diversity and improving engagement with schools from a young age to open up the industry in looking at aspects like social ability, how we recruit from different areas, we ourselves have connected with the 93% Club for example to specifically really focus on social mobility and bringing in more people across the industry that have never heard of real estate and giving them opportunities to get engaged. A number of the things that we’ve done this year that I’m incredibly proud of, working with WWF on sustainable futures, training people on sustainability in schools and bringing that real estate piece to life. We have got to do more and more of that and that engagement has definitely improved over the last few years across the industry and needs to continue. I also think that for whatever reason, we’ve probably been quite accepting as an industry historically, of the view of government, of the broader public as to where real estate was seen and we thought it wasn’t that important to change, it was almost the right thing to keep your head down or it wasn’t worth trying to change it. It was all too difficult. I think there’s a lot of work going on to change that now and has been for a while and you know, we’re in a different political heart of the cycle at the moment with a likely general election next year and so it’s a great opportunity to engage and make sure that people do understand how important the poll is and how important the sector is and what it can achieve.
Susan Freeman
It’s something that I think we keep asking ourselves, how do we get the messages out there, how do we get the government to take real estate more seriously as a sector? In terms of diversity and inclusion, just looking at JLL, what do you do to try and ensure that there is a better gender balance that people are coming in from different backgrounds, because again it’s something that we talked about in the industry for many, many, many years but it seems quite difficult to just change, you know to move the dial really.
Stephanie Hyde
Yes, again this is not unusual across all industries but it is probably something that real estate is extremely focussed on now and has been for several years but some started over a decade ago, 15 years ago. So, there is an opportunity to learn, but also to leap frog in different areas. If you went back 15 years ago and when I went on the UK board at PWC in 2011, I hosted a FTSE 250 Chairman’s dinner and the first individual that walked in handed me their coat despite the fact there was a man there waiting for his coat to be taken by him and they were very surprised to see a woman associate despite the fact the letter had come from me and the conversation was all about how we’re going to get diversity onto our boards. Fast forward 2 years and it was a much broader conversation about diversity, it wasn’t just about gender, it was about ethnicity, it was about experiences. It was about different industries taking part, it was so much broader, it was so much healthier because ultimately, we need to be completely inclusive and so, I think the industries embrace that again and you know, again at JLL this is something we take incredibly seriously. We just want everyone whatever their background or their experiences to be able to feel they can be themselves at work and similarly, you know for me that was one of the huge advantages of the pandemic, is we started to see that human side much more from people and that was ok and we were much more accepting of that, you didn’t have your kind of work face and your different aspect of your life outside and I think that is something we really need to preserve because I always look for the silver linings but it’s one of the silver linings from the pandemic. So we are doing lots of things, we are trying to look right the way across, so it’s about gender, it is about ethnicity, but it is also about aspects such as neurodiversity, it’s about disability, it’s about every aspect that we can look at to support people more broadly. So, a couple of examples probably easiest, we had been looking at how do we mentor and sponsor women over a number of years, we moved over the last couple of years to really focus sponsorship, not mentorship, on ethnicity and we’ve had 2 significant cohorts about 120 people involved through the organisation involving mentors, line managers and individuals, who we really want to make sure they’re having those access to opportunities and somebody is thinking about actively their development, and their success within the organisation and we have seen great success off the back of that. We have been doing a lot of work on disability, more broadly, we are now a disability Level 2 employer, we’re working towards Level 3. I have talked about social ability and some of the things we have been doing on that and we have been doing a lot of that work with clients which is really fun, really engaging and helps us get a much broader view as well across that and of course all the other aspects of diversity continues being incredibly important, like LGBT+ Plus as well, so, really everything is just at the forefront.
Susan Freeman
We touched on the fact that you’re the first and I think currently only female UK CEO, of one of the large property services businesses. Are you seeing the next generation of female leaders coming through, not just at JLL, you know across the industry? Are there people waiting in the wings?
Stephanie Hyde
I think that we are actually fortunate as an industry that across the industry there are many, many brilliant female leaders and I’ve spent time with a lot of them and just been so welcomed again by them, people like Rita-Rose, Jo Allen, Jo McNamara and Melanie Leech, they’re all, you know, at the forefront of their own fields and I think that we as an industry, a lot of people might from agencies into investor clients for example, but actually we need to think about how we also bring people back and we circle through the industry to get that experience. I was talking to someone recently from outside the agencies about an opportunity to come in and bring again a different aspect from within the industry, but not within the agencies. But also I know for all of the companies, it is a priority to continue to make sure that we do have people coming through. We have very specific targets for ourselves which we look at on a quarterly basis as a board, how we’re doing, what’s our level of attrition, what are we doing to develop people, how are we achieving the targets that we have set ourselves to ensure that we do have much more diversity at that leadership level and all you can keep doing, I don’t agree with quotas, but I do agree with targets and I agree with actively managing those targets and thinking it through.
Susan Freeman
I mean from what you’ve seen, you know, in the last few years, do people actually really want change in real estate? Is it a generational thing that actually will, it will come but are there still people at the top who, you know, like to do things the way they’ve always done them and can’t see that there’s a problem?
Stephanie Hyde
Look, I don’t think you can escape the unavoidable fact that when you look across every industry, I mean what do we have now? Eight women who lead a FTSE 100, you know, when you look across the whole world, it is still very male dominated in leadership and that is something that is still taking far too long to change, but as I said, diversity goes much broader than just gender, and backgrounds and experiences playing to that hugely as well. So, I am hopeful, I am believing when I talk to people that most people are getting it. I think you have to make sure that people understand it with their hearts and their minds. So there are very good business reasons why we want to make sure that diversity is much clearer across the industry. I mean how can you, how can you support people developing out the next Kings Cross if you don’t understand what it can feel like to live in that environment, you just can’t create the spaces and places that people want to live, work, play in, if you don’t understand that different people have different priorities and different expectations. So, most people can get that, but you also need to support people because what I do see is that often it can feel very awkward, I know when there was the challenges and discussions around Black Lives Matter, many colleagues at the time, I had felt quite awkward about how to approach it and I think we did it here at JLL as well, but when I was still at PWC then and a lot of work went on to let’s make sure we can have that open conversation, let’s create a safe environment because some people are so concerned about saying the wrong thing that they don’t say anything and that’s almost equally as bad. So, one of the things we did which was actually very good fun, but very tough for most people, was we developed some conscious leadership training where we took scenarios that we had become aware of either within JLL or across the industry or more broadly and we worked with a specific company to develop out those scenarios in a conversational way and we put two actors in front of them and one actor was playing the person that wanted to have the conversation, it might have been about, you know, needs and time-off because their partner was going to have a transgender operation and they needed support on that and the other actor was playing the role of a manager, a line manager, and we got the opportunity to rehearse again and again the conversation, how did it go? How did the person react? How do they feel? How could you try it differently? And it was non-confrontational but it was really helpful for people and we created numerous scenarios and different teams worked through all of these and it was just a safe environment to learn how things need to continue to progress because we are in a different generation now, the types of conversations are very different to probably 20/30 years ago and helping people through that is part of the journey, you can’t just expect people to know exactly how to deal with some of these challenges.
Susan Freeman
No, you are absolutely right because you know for some of the, I suppose older people in the industry, the sort of behaviours that were acceptable when they started in business, just aren’t acceptable now and there is quite a lot of retraining that needs to go on. We touched before on sustainability and what JLL has done over the years. Now, I just wonder what you made of the UK Green Building Council Report that came out a couple of days ago saying that we are behind target and the built environment needs to decarbonise twice as fast over the next couple of years. I mean, is that even possible and do we need move government intervention to enable us to do it because we have been working hard at decarbonising, so it’s a bit depressing to hear that.
Stephanie Hyde
Yes, and look I read that with interest and I think that it’s difficult not to agree with the challenge that we’re all seeing that we have such a responsibility to decarbonise, with the built environment accounting for 40% of global carbon emissions, we have to own this as an industry and I think that we are trying and I think there are a number of factors that have made it very, very difficult, such as we know the planning environment is not very easy to deal with and there’s lots of discussion on that going on. We know that the cost of retro-fitting has gone up significantly, both with labour and materials over the last few years. We know that if you look across that sort of embodied versus operational carbon, we’ve come on leaps and bounds, but the choice there isn’t always binary and whether you retro-fit all. You know, whilst I believe we should be retro-fitting, first you can’t have retro-fit only, it doesn’t always work. So, I agree that we are in a place where there is so much more to do and the government needs to help that because by giving some stability, giving some clarity on some of the standards, getting to a place where actually developers know what they’re aiming for and that it isn’t going to change half way through the builds and that they’re going to be supported in that journey, would be very beneficial for people to move forward. Particularly difficult in this economic environment we’re in, but the gauntlet’s laid down there by the Green Building Council and quite rightly, people have got to think how they respond. I do see great innovation and great technology being used, both on the circular economy I think I would call out GPE on what they’ve been doing on steel and utilising one site to another and 33:38 what they’ve been looking at. I know more companies are looking at how they built for disassembly and whether that’s actual in the fitting out or more in the structure, is very interesting. The work we’re doing with British Land at Broadgate is fascinating because they’re so committed to getting this right and really pushing the boundaries and we’re working really closely with them on that and enjoying I think, that environment of working closely on that amazing built. We just did some fit out, some changes in Warwick Street because we are obviously there for a few more years and we also when we fit out our offices in Water Street down in Canary Wharf, we spent time thinking about how we could use recycled materials but also we could put things in place that we could then move to Broadgate and so, all of that sort of thinking helps and it does help drive behaviours in a different way, but a lot of this is also about establishing the supply chains, putting that creativity in to get that circular piece working so that we can then utilise that for our clients as well.
Susan Freeman
Yes, it’s challenging, you know at a time where constructions costs are going up and there are all sorts of other things too to deal with. One of the points that the UK Green Building Council report made was on home retro-fitting. So, you know, I think we are doing some, you know, amazing things on commercial buildings and you know as you say, sort of reuse of materials and circular economy, but I think people still don’t know what they need to do for their own home.
Stephanie Hyde
Yeah, it’s definitely a big part of the focus that needs to continue to happen. Interestingly, I was just pleased to see that we’ve just launched some additional guidance at a specific site for our own people to go to, to understand what they can do in their own homes to really make a difference. Not just because it’s the right thing for the environment actually, but also to help them save money in these challenging times that we’re in and that’s one of the things that I do think is a positive actually with again, I try and look for the silver lining, but with the challenges that we have seen on energy prices over the last few years, people are much more committed to it, but I do think that’s where the government needs to do more and we as an industry whilst we are looking at that for new builds in particular, and for retro-fits and I know a lot of the house builders are doing a huge amount of work in this area. How you change the homes we have today, you know, 80% of the buildings that are around today will still be in 2050, so we’ve got to stay focussed on that as well. An interesting one that I think’s also coming into sustainability is the role of nature and bio-diversity. It’s often been seen as something quite separately, but I hosted a dinner for a number of CEO’s recently to have the conversation around what are we doing? There’s some great work going on on nature, and nature based solutions have a real impact on climate change and building resilience as well. So, we just, we need to continue to stay very forward and moving forward at pace, it’s a huge challenge, huge challenge.
Susan Freeman
And of course nature, you know, bio-diversity plants are all things that affect people’s well-being as well. So, you know, really, really a good reason for focussing on it. So, when you look at you know, you’re plans for JLL, how would you describe your vision you know, going forward for the organisation.
Stephanie Hyde
So, everything we do really has got to be focussed around our clients. How do we continue to help support our clients to move forward but also how do we push them to move forward and so, a lot of our focus is around how we bring a more holistic solution, how we join up across all of our services to help people think about the bigger picture, not just individual transactions and I think that’s again where the industry is perhaps evolved over the last decade or so, you could accuse it of being quite relatively siloed in the past and certainly where we’ve had a big focus on that, and really dedicated time and energy and individuals to having those much broader relationship roles we’ve received great positivity from our clients on it. That motivates our people in turn and you know people are our greatest asset and for them to feel incredibly valued in what they’re achieving and the difference that they’re making, is part of the motivation and then another big priority for me as well is innovation and really being at the forefront of what we’re talking about on sustainability, technology, data in particular, I think is incredibly exciting and then lastly, but certainly not least, a big priority for me is protecting the JLL culture because as I said earlier, I find it’s really, really special and interestingly, when it was announced I was coming, I had about a 1,000 people write to me within a week on LinkedIn and so many of them said, ‘Oh, JLL’s such a great place to be’, I almost though it can’t live up to it when I got here, but, but it has. (Laughter)
Susan Freeman
Well that’s really, really good to hear and in terms of data, I mean obviously you know, that’s something that you’d worked in and around in your previous roles, are we do you think, as an industry, really getting to grips with how data can be used, how important data is because it was actually getting people to embrace technology and prop tech initially was quite hard work, I think, you know perhaps with Covid and having to rely on technology, people have really understood how important it is, but are we using data in the way that we need to, or is it still a work in progress.
Stephanie Hyde
My overview on this would be that I don’t still think anybody is getting the true value out of data apart from maybe, you know some of the big tech companies, but I’m sure they really even say that they believe that they can still do more. When you look at real estate data, what’s fascinating is how you use it because as with every industry and every company, there is so much now, it is trying to make sense of what it can actually tell you. You almost need to come at it from two angles and 1 is, thinking about the types of data you are collecting and are you bringing the right data together in the right format so that you can use it in the right way, but the other aspect of data is, are you thinking about what you want to know from it because otherwise you end up creating something that isn’t actually very useable and so we’ve spent quite a lot of time think, what would it be good to know? What could we use data to tell us? And you know, I’d call out some colleagues in our capital markets area who just produced the most amazing AI driven capability to be able to do predictive work on deals, so by looking across all of the deals that have happened, who’s going to go for the next thing next and what should they go for or if they’ve shown interest in this, this and this, what else should they know about and so those conversations happening with clients in a very different way, is really engaging and very, very interesting and again it brings together that holistic view if you understand a company’s strategy, you can work with your clients so much better. Another part of data, which I think is only really getting going is around GPT and JLL developed its own GPT platform earlier this year. It’s developing fast as ever, it learns as it goes and the ability to be able to pull data into that and just use it to hone our capabilities in looking at things very much more in a focussed way is just very positive. Let me give you an example, so, recently we had our people survey and I think we had, I don’t know, something like 7,000 comments across 41:36, lots and lots to try and look through, so normally you would expect to then try and look through the spreadsheet and see common things. You can put that into JLL GPT and ask it to summarise the key points and suddenly you can, you know, really assimilate what people are telling you and the things that you need to focus on to have the biggest difference and that saves a lot of time but it also helps you really move things forward quicker and in the right way.
Susan Freeman
Oh, it’s actually so exciting, you know, what is possible and how one can use this data to do, you know, an ever better job for clients. But I think a lot of people are concerned because they’re concerned about, you know, their jobs and will AI take over a lot of the work that they’re doing? I mean, how do you deal with that side of it?
Stephanie Hyde
What I’ve seen from a lot of focus on automation in my previous life is that there is an opportunity for jobs to become far more interesting and evolve and just take that example, it wasn’t like I was therefore didn’t need that time, the time I didn’t need to sit and read through a load of comments that the computer could do for me, I could use it on other things, engaging with people in a different way, spending more time with clients and that’s true for everyone. There’s a lot of redundant time that we have as individuals where we’re doing administrative tasks. That’s where I think the benefit of AI and the use of technology can come in, is to make jobs far more interesting. Certainly again that was my experience in the audit area, was a lot of ticking and bashing as it was known, where you would go back to individual invoices and check every single thing. Actually using technology to do things in a different way to look at journals in a different way allowed people to spend more time on the judgemental items and to get to those judgemental items at a perhaps more junior level to learn more and progress more. I think that will be very similar in this industry, not spending as much time chasing up on individual things and spending more time on either other transactions or other experiences and so, I don’t worry about it as much. I read an amazing book years ago about the future of the professions which basically said everyone was going to be replaced by robots. Hasn’t happened yet, don’t see it happening for quite a while and if it does, maybe we will go to a four day week and actually just spend a bit more time enjoying the planet, who knows? (Laughter)
Susan Freeman
I suppose it does mean that there’s going to be more of a focus on the sort of people skills and relationships and the thing that worries me a little bit is that the younger people sort of coming through are so used to doing everything on their phone or you know, on their laptop, apparently don’t like making, you know, telephone calls, how are they going to learn those people skills and feel comfortable actually, you know, having face to face conversations, talking to people, they don’t necessarily know that they, you know, come across at an event because that’s all quite daunting if it’s not something you’re used to.
Stephanie Hyde
So as a mother of two teenage boys (Laughter) I could empathise with this point and you know, it does worry me, not just for them as individuals, but more generally, but they find a different way to interact and we have to understand that the world will move on, so you know, I don’t like the fact that my boys will sit on a computer and play games and be on Discord and chatting with their friends and they don’t want to be face-to-face, but they do that for a very good reason, because actually the broadband width or you know, they can all be at home and they’re still engaging in a different way and whilst I don’t think we are all going to go and live in the metaverse, I do think that those social skills are still there and they will evolve and we as employers and actually, I’m a governor at school as well and, you know, the schools play a significant role in making sure that those communication skills are still honed, but maybe they’ll have more time for that interaction in a different way if we can get the use of technology like GPT, AI to work in a right way for them. But, we have to stay focussed on it because we are a people business at the end of the day and most businesses do rely on people interaction in some way, shape or form, so as parents, as every part of society needs to stay focussed. But I don’t think it’s as much of a risk as perhaps we might feel, I hope. (Laughter)
Susan Freeman
No, I hope as well, and you mentioned metaverse and it just made me think that we haven’t been thinking quite so much about the metaverse, I mean, you know, go back a year when we were all talking about the metaverse and you know, taking space in the metaverse, but it seems to have dropped out of the conversation a little bit. Are JLL in the metaverse?
Stephanie Hyde
Yes, so we have used it in lots of different ways and I think this comes back to how do you use the right technology for the right situation? So, one way that we’ve used the metaverse for example, is to train our sustainability graduates. That went down really well, it was really engaging. Could we have trained them a different way? Yes, we could, but it was a great experience for them. We’ve used it in other ways as well, but I don’t know, I think a lot often with these new pieces of technology, new areas, it comes back to actually is it more about augmented reality rather than alternative reality? There’s lots of ways of thinking about how it gets used, visualisation techniques, we’ve been developing some packages recently on that and some ways of doing that with companies to help them think about, offices in particular actually, but we’ve used it in the logistics and other things as well. So, I think it still exists but, people’s understanding of the metaverse really varies because it can be as broad as, you know, what Meta itself has talked about in terms of creating this alternative reality for people to play in, ultimately right the way down to practical tools and experiences. So, depends how you use it.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, it’s just another dimension isn’t it.
Stephanie Hyde
Yes.
Susan Freeman
You were on a panel recently at the RICS, which was looking at a year on from the Truss mini budget and you made a comment that, when you came into the industry that it felt like there were two or three things that people were investing in and it’s like more exciting now people are looking at, you know, different strategies and looking for different opportunities and I thought that was quite interesting and I sort of wondered, you know, where people are looking, because they certainly are looking for opportunities and, you know, a way of sort of differentiating what they doing. How have those conversations changed?
Stephanie Hyde
So, yeah the point I was making is actually there were two or three things that everybody was going for, so industrial, logistics or build-to-rent and actually because of the economic challenges and because of the opportunities that presents, there were more niches being explored. So whether that was data centres or boutique hotels or actually looking at more sort of carbon focussed land acquisition or solar. It just became so much more broad and interesting and much more niche, much more exploratory and I think that has continued, but I also think that we are probably going into a bit of a part of a new cycle where and Nick Laszlo was on the panel as well and he was talking about those opportunities soon in this market and I think we’re seeing that already, where people are starting to adjust on the pricing again and looking at the conversations they can have on doing deals in a different way and how do they parcel things up? We’ve seen that, certainly from the PE houses for a while. So, it’s just, it will continue to evolve, but I probably came in at a specific point in the cycle and it, you know, we went from Covid to an absolute, the market taking off in early 22 and then come to a pretty much bit of a screeching, not a halt, but a slowdown, by the end of 22. So, what will 24 bring? (Laughter)
Susan Freeman
Yeah, and Nick also, I think, made a point about how we create the next generation of entrepreneurs? You know, how will they learn?
Stephanie Hyde
Definitely, and something we’re taking again really seriously, because I do worry about it for many of our younger colleagues this will be their first experience of this type of economic cycle. I mean, some of the people that I work with have talked about living through 3 or even 4 cycles, but because of the stability that we’ve had for so long, it’s daunting for our younger people and it’s really important as leaders that we recognise that. Real estate is a cyclical industry. It retains its fundamentals. It will come back, it’s difficult to see almost when. Nobody has a crystal ball and nobody wants to predict the exact timing but it is a when not an if and so, even yesterday, we regularly host lunchtime learners but yesterdays was called A New Cycle for Real Estate and Adam Challis our Head of Research, was really trying to help people understand and pull together the whole component of the political, the economic cycle. We’re in debt equity, what’s actually happening? Why are we where we are? Let’s educate people to feel more understanding of what’s going on and then what does that mean for us and what do we need to do? Is the next step then that we work through with teams and see that role modelling and see that confidence? It’s hard out there at the moment, people are having to work very hard to achieve the same sorts of things that perhaps would have been slightly easier a year ago, or even eighteen months ago. So, it’s just having that understanding, but also as leaders projecting that confidence and taking the time as individuals and we keep reinforcing that and stay close to the feedback from our people to make sure it’s happening.
Susan Freeman
Yes, that’s so important and I was going to ask you how you spend your down time. You’ve obviously mentioned your sons and I saw somewhere that astronomy was something that (Laughter), I don’t know where I saw that, is that right?
Stephanie Hyde
That’s something we got into in Covid so my husband bought a telescope for us as a family and we were out there regularly and we just got quite fascinated by being able to look at the planets, the stars, we were watching shooting stars, it’s amazing. It’s, I think lots of us were looking for different ways of seeing ourselves and the world during Covid and it was a great way to sort of ground yourself and really think about how the world is working and how you know, how, in some ways, how insignificant you are, how short a period of time we’re in and it will change and it was just, it was another aspect. My son was also doing a little bit of, of that at school so it worked really well to spend some time with him on that but it, it continues to be something every now and then we dig out. I’ve not managed to get the pictures that I would have liked to have got from it. Some people have got some amazing pictures through their telescope. Indeed my cousin’s son has been posting some things on the family WhatsApp that are just staggering really. One of my ex-partners has also got into it so yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s my, top of my list passionate hobby now but it was certainly something I was, I was loving at the time.
Susan Freeman
What is top of the list?
Stephanie Hyde
Probably still walking the dogs in the country. I live in Amersham and I live on the edge of the Chiltern Hills and regularly go out. I’ve got two wonderful dogs and go out with the family or just my husband even and the dogs and we just go for long walks and just getting out in the fresh air and seeing nature and it’s just very, very relaxing. I also swim. I try and cycle but not at this time of year, I’m probably a fair-weather cyclist and then most of it is just spending time with the boys. My two sons and one of them’s gone to university recently, he’s back soon. I just love spending time with them, seeing them grow up as individuals and being there as a parent, it’s you know, it’s a huge privilege but a huge responsibility too.
Susan Freeman
Well it sounds like an amazing balance so…
Stephanie Hyde
I try.
Susan Freeman
Well yeah, well done you.
Stephanie Hyde
(Laughter) Don’t we all.
Susan Freeman
We do. Stephanie thank you so much, I mean that was brilliant to talk to you today and you know, keep up the good work.
Stephanie Hyde
Thank you. I was really privileged to be asked so thank you.
Susan Freeman
Thank you, Stephanie. It’s so refreshing to get the perspective of someone so experienced in other sectors who is able to view real estate objectively and I love the fact that you also keep an eye on the silver linings.
So, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very soon.
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